Self-help guru Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 book, “The Power of Positive Thinking,” influenced Donald Trump’s worldview more than anything else he ever read, according to biographers. “Stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding,” Peale wrote. “Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.” The book includes chapters with titles like “Expect the Best and Get It” and “I Don’t Believe in Defeat.” Peale, who was also a favorite of the president’s father, even officiated the first of Trump’s three weddings.
The Trump presidency has presented scores of painful lessons on the limitations of the power of positive thinking. Climate change continues to make fires, floods and hurricanes worse, even if Trump denies it and his political appointees seek to erase mentions of it from government reports. Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the intelligence community agrees the Kremlin is trying once again to influence the 2020 campaign, but Trump struggles to accept that reality because, current and former aides say, he believes that acknowledging the Kremlin’s support for his campaign would undermine his legitimacy. And so on.
But nothing captures the hubris of trying to spin the primal forces of nature into submission more than the president’s response to the novel coronavirus.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany became the latest member of Trump’s inner circle to test positive. She announced in a statement on Monday that she has no symptoms and will continue to work – but from home.
Apparently, denialism can be infectious, as well. The White House’s lead physician, Sean Conley, acknowledged at a news conference on Sunday that he intentionally withheld information about Trump’s blood-oxygen levels plummeting in order to put a positive spin on the president’s condition. “I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, that his course of illness, has had,” Conley said. “I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true.”
A virus does not care what a doctor says at a news conference. White House communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters that Conley was trying to project positive for Trump’s sake during his public remarks on Saturday. “When you’re treating a patient, you want to project confidence, you want to lift their spirits, and that was the intent,” she said.
But Conley was not speaking to Trump during his Saturday news conference. He was addressing the American people.
Since being hospitalized on Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, the president has been treated with the steroid dexamethasone, the antiviral drug remdesivir and a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Outside doctors think Trump may be the first coronavirus patient ever given all three of these strong treatments simultaneously, along with a handful of supplements and over-the-counter drugs. Medical experts we checked with called it a kitchen-sink approach that suggests the president is in worse shape than the White House is claiming.
- “He’s not even pretending to care now,” one current Secret Service agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed.
- “Where are the adults?” said a former member of the Secret Service.
 White House chief of staff Mark Meadows listens as Sean Conley speaks to the media on Sunday at Walter Reed. (Erin Scott/Reuters) |
As the virus spread among the people closest to him last week, Trump asked an adviser not to disclose results of their own positive test. “Don’t tell anyone,” Trump said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
We found out that Trump himself tested positive on a rapid test that he took Thursday and was awaiting the results of a second, more reliable, test when he called into Sean Hannity’s show that night. He did not reveal the news to the Fox News host. Former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway’s teen daughter, Claudia, broke the news on Friday, via her social media platforms, that her mom was infected. Claudia Conway says she, too, has now tested positive for the virus.
There are other indications that the president’s attempted coverup continues. “Farah told reporters Sunday that the White House would be more forthcoming going forward, and would release information about the number of aides who have tested positive for the virus. Later Sunday, [McEnany] indicated that such information would not be released, citing privacy considerations. Several White House officials are still waiting to learn if they will be infected,” Toluse Olorunnipa, Dawsey and Amy Goldstein report. “Nick Luna, Trump’s personal assistant, has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a senior administration official. … Meanwhile, at least two White House residence staffers contracted the virus some weeks ago and were sent home. Administration officials do not believe those staffers directly gave the virus to the president, given the passage of time since their cases.” Neither of those cases were disclosed to the public. The White House did not acknowledge that senior adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive until a reporter for Bloomberg News broke the story.
There is a lot the White House still will not say. Conley declined to answer when asked how Trump’s lungs have been affected by the virus, whether he has pneumonia and what his exact temperature has been. The White House refuses to say when Trump last tested negative for the coronavirus. That is a critical piece of information to determine how long the president may have been contagious — and how many people he may have put at risk by traveling to Ohio, Minnesota and New Jersey.
And Trump continues to put a positive spin on his experience. In a video he posted to Twitter on Sunday evening, Trump said he’s “learned a lot” about covid-19. “I learned it by really going to school,” the president said from his hospital suite. “This is the real school; this isn’t the let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing. And I’m going to be letting you know about it.”
The American people do not approve of Trump’s denialism. An ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted in the two days after Trump announced his diagnosis found that 72 percent said both that the president did not take the “risk of contracting the virus seriously enough” and that he did not take “the appropriate precautions when it came to his personal health.” The poll, released Sunday, found that 43 percent of Republicans shared the negative sentiments about Trump's mind-set and preventative actions regarding the coronavirus. Overall approval for the president's handling of the pandemic held steady at 35 percent, where it has been since early July.
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“Trump aides acknowledge that the president’s illness has been unhelpful because it draws national attention to his administration’s handling of the pandemic,” Phil Rucker, Dawsey and Annie Linskey report. “They also say that the president being hospitalized undercuts what he views as his main attribute over Biden: That he appears stronger and tougher. ‘Anytime the conversation is about coronavirus, it’s not helpful for us,’ said a senior administration official … “No matter the head winds, members of the Trump team said they have not lost hope. Veterans of his 2016 campaign recall that Trump appeared doomed after the ‘Access Hollywood’ video showing him bragging about sexual assault was revealed …
“Jason Miller, a campaign adviser, said the president is ‘chomping at the bit’ to hit the road again for in-person campaign events. … Miller said he spoke to him late Sunday. He also said Trump was planning to ‘lead on the virus’ because he is a ‘senior citizen who has beat it.’ … He has told allies that whenever he resumes campaigning, he will change his message on the pandemic to speak in personal terms about how he beat the virus, advisers say. … Aides do not expect to have him back on the road for at least 10 to 14 days.”
The assertion by Trump’s doctors that he could be discharged from the hospital as early as tomorrow astonished outside infectious-disease experts. “Medical consensus has emerged that covid-19 patients are especially vulnerable for a period of a week to 10 days after their first symptoms,” Ariana Eunjung Cha and Goldstein report. “Some patients who seem relatively healthy suddenly deteriorate, either because of the virus itself or an excessive immune response that can cause damage to several organs, including the heart. A multitude of possible cardiac complications have also been associated with covid-19, the most prominent of which involves a hardening of the walls of the heart that makes it difficult to pump blood and can lead to heart failure. …
Several doctors expressed worry there is no data indicating how dexamethasone, remdesivir and the experimental cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that Trump is taking might react with each other, especially in an overweight 74-year-old man with a mild heart condition who is in the high risk group for severe coronavirus disease. “Dexamethasone is recommended only in patients who are extremely ill, according to many guidelines, but a number of hospitals routinely give the drug to any patient who requires supplemental oxygen, if only for a few hours. A recent study found it tends to reduce deaths from the virus but nearly a quarter of infected patients getting it with supplemental oxygen — as Trump has — still died. Steroids in high doses and over long periods of time also can lead to serious changes in mental status that include delirium, hallucinations and confusion,” per Eunjung Cha and Goldstein.
“Hydroxychloroquine is not on the list of medications his doctors said Trump is taking at Walter Reed.
Conley, as Trump’s lead doctor, is drawing scrutiny for more than just his rosy assessments at the news conferences this weekend. This spring, the 40-year-old Navy commander confided to co-workers that he was laboring under intense personal stress in his job as White House physician and said the pressures of the job were weighing on him, Leonnig and Bob O'Harrow report: “Some of Conley’s former colleagues said they were disappointed in what they view as his lack of independence from White House politics. ‘Every statement he is giving appears to be political, dictated by the White House or the president,’ said one person who has worked with him … Questions about Conley began bubbling this spring when he treated Trump with hydroxychloroquine … The White House has also repeatedly cited Conley in statements asserting that the administration was properly mitigating the risks of covid-19.
“Former colleagues describe Conley as pleasant and collegial but said he lacks the extensive management experience that previous occupants of the job had. … Conley is a doctor of osteopathic medicine, while his predecessors have been internists or general practitioners. … Osteopath training focuses on the relationship of the bones and the body and on treatment of the musculoskeletal system. … The dynamics of Conley’s role in the military, like those of many of his predecessors, make it difficult for him to push back against Trump, former administration officials noted. As a Navy officer, Conley ultimately reports to the president and cannot defy an order from the commander in chief.”
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a contact tracing team ready to go, according to multiple sources, but had not been asked to mobilize,” per Dawsey, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Joel Achenbach. “Officials in Minnesota, Ohio and New Jersey, where Trump held events in recent days, said they haven’t heard from the White House and are racing largely on their own to find people potentially exposed to the virus. … Numerous guests at the crowded Sept. 26 Rose Garden event at which Trump introduced Amy Coney Barrett as his high court nominee said they have not been contacted by anyone at the White House even though at least seven attendees have since tested positive. …
“Joe Grogan, former head of the domestic policy council under Trump, said the White House complex is old and typically jam-packed with staffers working 12 to 16 hours a day. ‘Things spread like wildfire in the West Wing. It’s the most unhealthy place I have ever worked. People are just sick all the time,’ Grogan said.”
 Jack Varrison, 24, shows support for Trump outside Walter Reed. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post) |
The president’s supporters continue to hold a vigil outside Walter Reed.
“Fifty supporters danced on the northbound curb of Rockville Pike, elbows and knees within inches of side-view mirrors moving at 40 mph. The blare of horns competed with AC/DC and Lee Greenwood. Men with bullhorns walked around, calling for ‘eight more years,’ praying to God, needling journalists and the handful of protesters across the street, at the intersection of the pike and South Wood Road,” Dan Zak reports. “Trump is sick, so the rally has come to him, with all the hallmarks: relentless noise, cultish fervor glazed with folksy politeness, and general masklessness … They are very loud.”